Kûd-dûkan

The name used in Rohan for legendary creatures standing half the size of a Man. In the War of the Ring it was discovered by the Rohirrim that these people were real: they were, in fact, the Hobbits. The legends had come down, no doubt, from the time these two peoples had lived close together in the Vales of Anduin long before.

Kûd-dûkan was the actual name used in Rohan, but in the text of The Lord of the Rings it is rendered in its Old English equivalent: hence the word Holbytlan in Théoden's exclamation above. In the Shire and in Bree, this ancient word had been worn down to Kuduk, and that is the actual form of the name much better known in its translated form of 'Hobbit'.